Wednesday, January 06, 2010

Hoppin' John

One last holiday post-hoppin' John! Of all the new years dishes I have made (soup with cotechino, mochi soup), hoppin' John was by far the best and is the perfect thing to eat on New Years day when you finally eat your first meal at 5pm after feeling utterly nauseous all day and watching a Criminal Minds marathon on the Ion channel.

I got the recipe here. How cute is this man? And how much better was his recipe than the boring version of this dish in the Gourmet cookbook? So much better. His has sprigs of thyme, for one thing.A couple more pictures, from the Stockton flea market/farmer's market that happens every weekend (the on on El Dorado, not Wilson). In the town of Stockton, not Stockton Blvd. Check out the menu. When I saw the "pork lion" listing I knew I had to get it.This torta was fucking awesome! That's crema, not mayo.Here's the mural on the truck. Are those partying shrimp? And the car/taco looks like it's leaking blood. What is he saying? Ye ha y mis tortas. One booth was really advertising that they had corn tamales, which I don't see that much. Turns out that they were sweet. The corn was kinda like creamed corn.Here's the booth. It grossed me out to watch them slathering mayo on ears of corn. By the way, how do you pronounce "elote". Is it "eee-low-tay". It doesn't have an accent so I thought it was "eee-lote" but I don't think that's right.More Stockton signs

walking through astoria, queens a few weeks ago we found a taco truck that was selling squash flower tacos with queso oaxaca. in that book "1491" the guy says this is one of the oldest surviving dishes in mexico, but I had never seen it in the US before.

Just got back from Guadalajara and Guanafauto. The Tortas were mind boggling in Guadalajara. In Guanafauto, I bought tacos with fried potatoes for 25 cents. Drank mas tequila and was El Borracho for a day. People were super nice in Guanafauto. Followed folk musicians thru the streets for Christmas and kissed my wife on Beso Calle. Ate street food galore and saw a drunk stumble downstairs from a cantina. And everybody was lightining off firecrackers for Christmas.